Realize that deadliness is not by and large about pkilling. The heart
of pkill is staying alive, and many aspects of it have nothing to do with
fighting. Realize that with a tiny bit of knowledge and practice, no one
can kill you one on one, even if you're naked. They just can not touch
you.
Key factors are awareness, cooperation with others, and knowing where
to hide.
In Robert Heinlein's "A tunnel in the sky", the protagonist is
advised to avoid taking a gun and other extraneous equipment on his
mission. This is to remind him that he is not a hunter, he is a feeble
little rabbit whose main concern should be staying under cover.
Pkilling
Your prompt needs to have hp/hp(so you know if you're bsable, and i also find
that style and invis/hide/sneak indicator are very important.
My prompt is
<&Y%h/%Hhp &R%m/%Mm &C%vv &G%aal &R%A &O%g>
One thing most people do not know is that you lose sneak when you flee. Every time I flee I automatically hit my sneak macro. Sneak is underrated by most people. I use a forest cap on my lev 34 instead of a iron helm which has 3 dr. If you wear an item aff by sneak, you can resneak by saving. Note that saving takes a little bit longer than the sneak command, so if you have sneak, use that instead.
Deadly
Important: do not try to level to av on your first deadly. Do not try to join a clan on your first deadly for at least a few weeks. Get a warrior and level to 9 or 24. 9 is good for beginners because the damage is so low, and 24 is good for intermediates because the damage is so high. If you join a clan, you are immediately the target of other clans. You immediately get bad habits like recalling every time you're in danger, and cowering in hq. Recalling implies that you lack skill, and furthermore in some circumstances recalling can be worse than walking out. Recalling lags you for a second, so if you fail your c word( I use recall scrolls only for fleecalling), or if you get hit by a pursue, you are much more likely to die. Don't do it unless you are surrounded and low on hp. Being able to walk out of town when you want is not just defensive; it also means that you can flee and quickly return to the room you were in and attack a different person.
Exercise: at temple, have some guy spam murder you. You flee, sneak, (or save if you are wearing a forest cap or some such), and go back into the room as fast as you can and try to murder him before he murders you. Repeat. If you can do this quickly, you can get out of 90% of situations.
Do not expect other deadlies to help you, ever. It is not their responsibility. Understand that every week, some guy tries to ask a bunch of questions, and even if someone answers, he probably quits anyways because he doesn't have what it takes. Answering his questions is like throwing money down the toilet. If you need to know something, you're better off asking on peaceful channels.
A key help file for every new deadly is help pkmap. This tells you really everything you need to know about pk town. Ignore the part south of ashen alley with all the molten flux stuff. You don't need to know it until later. You need to know the town very well, especially if you want to run away while blind. When you are blind, your only indicator of where you are is bumping around and typing where to see your room name. The best thing to do when blind is to flee, sneak, and move randomly and hope you recognize where you are from the bumping. Then you run around outside of pktown until you can log off. Later you can get your peaceful to use a quill pen from Lady Fenia in Ocean Keep( which cures blind on all in room).
While leveling, it is a good habit to do who deadly and where periodically to see if someone is hunting you. If they are, the key is to keep moving. Portal or no, no one can even touch you if you just keep moving non stop. Even if you are naked at 1 hp, and 4 guys are hunting you, you cannot be killed unless you stop moving(in a linear fashion, no backtracking). If you must, then just log off and go do something else and come back later when they aren't on. Note that being clanned guarantees that people will be hunting you constantly.
When you die to someone, do not start trash talking them, especially before you cr. That will almost certainly get you looted at least once, and probably many times. If someone kills you, go back, get your corpse, do not say ANYTHING mitigating or extenuating such as "I ran out of heals" or "I wasn't ready". Your responsibility is to have heals, and to be ready. Look at his eq, and copy it.
Trash Talk: Don't do it unless you can back it up. If someone starts saying you're a bitch, just agree and put in one of those damn :) things and then mention how you like breasts. This technique is IMMENSELY endearing. Ask Machello. Do not take anything anyone says too seriously because they don't even know you. Do not ever show that it made you mad, if it did. That only encourages more insults. Divert the topic to something obscene. The dirty minded scum will forget his focus(you, who are a bitch), and start discussing boobs and such.
Loot: Most people will not loot you unless they are mad at you. Your goal should be to not have anyone mad at you. If someone loots you, ask nicely if you can have it back. Mention how you never did anything to them, and you are a newbie and have a hard time getting eq. If they keep it anyways, just do the same thing next time. They will stop looting eventually, probably. Or you will stop dying so much, or you will quit. If they repeatedly loot you for no reason, start being fussy about it on war and perhaps someone will notice and loot them. Note: If you are in a clan, expect to be looted by people from other clans.
L-d, DL?: l-d means the person had a link dead flag. dl means
they were disconnected but did not have the flag. To understand what this
is like, if you are a modem user, connect to rod, disconnect your modem, and
reconnect to rod.
Already playing... Kicking off old connection.
Reconnecting.
Leave them alone. It's just very lame, and other people will start killing you. If there is doubt, give the loot back if any. You know it can happen to you.
Conclusion:
Anyone with some practice will never die on deadlies, as long as they don't fight. If you fight, you will die, and that is fine. If you enjoy pitting
your wits against other real people instead of lame repetetive mobs, give it a
shot. If you get good, invite other people you know and mentor them.